Catalans job is the best in Super League, says Steve McNamara

Catalans coach Steve McNamara insists he has the best job in Super League and is excited to take more games on the road to Barcelona and beyond.

The Dragons lifted their first silverware in 2018 with a historic Challenge Cup victory, which led to the opportunity to play Wigan at FC Barcelona’s iconic Nou Camp stadium last month.

A Super League regular season record crowd of 31,555 attended the game, creating much hope that it may well be repeated in years to come.

McNamara said: “The Catalans head coach job is the best in Super League.

“It’s so different, so challenge. We’re the only team with different languages spoken in the team. We’ve got French and English, then we’ve got a mix from Australia and New Zealand, all with different cultures.

“Australians are quite laid back while we’ve got the volatile Catalonian personality which is a complete opposite.

“Those challenges are great. The travel is difficult for us, we’re the only team constantly doing travel and so we’ve got to manage the group well.

“It’s a different experience. All of that put together makes this a tough job and I’m very lucky because we have brilliant staff that work with us on both the physical and mental side to make sure our players are ready to play.

“It’s one hell of a job, there are some highs and lows, but the Barcelona experience does take some beating in terms of general experiences.

“We are the Catalans Dragons, we aren’t the Perpignan Dragons, we represent Catalans.

“Barcelona, Girona and some other areas have fanatical support for sport. Clearly football is number one, but Barcelona is a great city for all sorts of sporting events.

“For us to bring our sport to this area, and hopefully we do it again, is a big success.

“Given more time to prepare as well, I think if we have another fixture in a year we could make it even bigger and stronger as we move forward.

“Perpignan is our home of course, that’s where our people are from, but we want to represent Catalans as a region.”

Adrian Jackson and Dave Parkinson discuss the last round of Super League and talk about all the stories including Ottawa, coronavirus and the league form of Toronto, Huddersfield and Leeds. [Read more…]